What the Walls Witnessed

I can only begin to imagine what the walls would tell us if they could talk. What would the walls within my childhood home be able to share with me? Maybe it would help to shed some light on my fuzzy memories.

I grew up. We all grow up if we are lucky enough to do so. We leave the places we grew up in, move on, spread our wings, and leave the nest. But we never do leave. Or perhaps it is that those places don’t leave us. 

No matter your experiences growing up, those houses, those structures of wood, mortar, and drywall, they stay within our hearts and souls. When they talk about their childhood homes, people’s eyes get this faraway look of peaceful bliss. Well, some of our eyes get that look.

Lucky Memories

Depending on your perspective, your parents may still live in your childhood home if you are lucky or unlucky. You can visit it, that place that you grew in, becoming an adult. Those structures hold fond memories of holidays, family gatherings, the warmth of love if you are lucky. 

I was not that lucky. My early years were filled with anything but luck, except that I am fortunate to be here still, existing in the world. But those years that the house was witness to were dark days and even darker nights. Within those walls, the walls of my childhood home, monsters lived. 

Perhaps it should not surprise me that I have been dreaming about that house. Each dream is different, but the house is my childhood home. 

I know that dreams tell us about life in general, what we are supposed to do next, things like that. But I cannot yet figure out why I am dreaming about the house that I spent thirteen years of my life in.

Dreams of Childhood Home

I suppose it could be that it is the place I lived the longest, and the place that I have most of my memories, and the abuse that I recall occurred there. The dreams have stayed with me. 

The most recent one was one that I was walking by, that I walked to the door, knocked, and asked to come in—explaining that I used to live there. Walking in, I can hear the walls telling me the secrets that only the house and I know. Oh, if the walls really could talk. 

I am now obsessed, for some reason, with that house. Who lives there now? I have Google Street view stalked that house. It looks like no one lives there, although I see the back end of a car in the pictures.

Outside is the Inside

I can see the fields are overgrown, and the fence that I used to spend so much time fixing as a kid, in such disrepair. It is sad to me. But perhaps the house is beginning to buckle under the weight of what the walls witnessed. 

Although that house contains horrible memories and lots of struggle, it was the place that was still my home. It was the place that I still managed to have a safe place, not safe from the monsters in the house, but I created a safe place as best I could. 

It was a place that I could go into my introverted self and know that once I was in my cave, and yes, it was very cave-like. My room was on the 2^nd floor, up the stairs, down a long hallway. My room overlooked the busy road that ran past the house.

My Sanctuary

My room was a sanctuary if a bit creepy. There were three doors, well, four if you count the one people used to come into the room. It had a door to an attic space, which was quite large, had solid flooring.   

It had another door that, at one point, was going to be a second bathroom. But whoever started that project never finished the bathroom. There was a door in the back of the closet too. It went up into the top part of the house, above my room, into the rafters. 

I had locks on all of those doors. 

Still, with those odd rooms, and doors, it was my space. I could escape to my room. And I made it mine as much as I could. I do wish I could go back there. And listen to the walls. What would they tell me?